In psychedelic therapy’s first decade, nearly every expert had agreed that substances like mescaline, peyote, and LSD caused “experimental psychosis.” But as those same researchers began using psychedelics themselves, many concluded that the experience conferred lasting insights. Stuck between an outmoded medical definition and their own reluctance to forsake the veneer of scientific objectivity that would be stripped away if they admitted to their self-experimentation, their contradictory public utterances about psychedelics betrayed an inner epistemological tension.
